The weasel shook his head. “Not saying it isn’t something I don’t recognize. Or a combination. But bring in a demonologist. Hell, I’ll send one. Eliminate the mysterious first. If there’s no supernatural cause, send for me. Be an interesting challenge.”
Morley grinned slyly. “You two work it right, you could have careers here. Him trying to root out an unknown disease and you trying to find a killer who’s smarter than you are.”
I grumbled, “My part’s easy. I just stay alive till there’s only one suspect left.” My head was killing me. That didn’t do wonders for my temper. “Doc, you got something for a headache?”
“What happened?”
I told him.
He insisted on examining me and offering the usual advice about concussions. Maybe he wasn’t a pure thief. I have a low opinion of professionals, notably doctors and lawyers, supported by experience.
He gave me a dose of the old standby, syrup heavily laced with nasty-tasting stuff boiled out of the inner bark of willow branches. With that perking in my stomach I decided to get on with getting on. “Peters, it’ll be suppertime soon. These guys might be hungry. Square it with Cook, if they want to eat. I’m going to drop in on the General.”
Peters grunted, asked if anybody wanted supper. Saucerhead and the doctor were all for that. And Morley was staying anyway.
As I climbed the stairs, I recalled that I’d told Dellwood he should ride into town in the coach. Was he out there waiting, freezing with the coachman?
It was still raining. I felt for Wayne and Chain, too. Though Chain not so much. I had him. All I needed to do was push him into a box and put a bow on him.
“Throw him out,” Stantnor rasped at Kaid, when I invited myself in.
Kaid eyed me. “I don’t believe he’ll let me, sir.” He said it with a straight face. There was a twinkle in his eye. He turned to the fire to hide a smile.
I asked, “Did you hear the diagnosis, General?”
“Mr. Garrett. I didn’t employ you to interfere in my life. I employed you to find a thief.”
“And a killer. And a would-be killer who wants your scalp. And that implies that part of the job is to keep you alive. And to do that I need to know how they’re trying to kill you. The assumption was poison. The assumption was wrong.”
He appeared surprised. Maybe they hadn’t told him. Maybe he’d become so obnoxious, they’d just walked.
“Mr. Dotes is an expert on poisons. Likewise the doctor, who’s also an expert on tropical diseases.” Could it hurt to exaggerate? “They say you’re not being poisoned, unless it’s a poison so exotic they’ve never heard of it. And you’re not suffering from any known disease, though the doctor says you’re anemic and jaundiced. Have you had malaria, General?”
I think he was secretly touched that people cared enough to look out for him in spite of himself. “Yes. Hard to avoid it in the islands.”
“Bad?”
“No.”
“You taking quinine on the sly? The doctor says impure quinine might explain some of your problems.”
“No! I won’t . . . ” He suffered one of his spasms. Was it his heart?
It was a minor one. He’d begun to recover before Kaid reached him. He croaked, “No, Mr. Garrett. No medication. I’d refuse if it was offered.”
“I thought so. But I had to make sure before I tell you what they think.”
“Which is?” He was coming back fast.
“You’re haunted.”
“Eh?” That blindsided him. He looked at Kaid. Kaid just looked baffled.
“Your problem is supernatural. Your enemy is a ghost. Or somebody who can send a spirit against you. Peters says you don’t have that kind of enemies. The doctor says look at your past for somebody.”
I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but his color worsened dramatically. He damned near turned gray.
There was something. Some dark past moment unknown to anyone else, so dreadful someone might reach out from the grave to restore the balance. Hell, a place like the Stantnor shack wouldn’t be complete without a horror in its past, without a curse.
“We’d better talk about it,” I said. “We’ll have to hire experts.” I gave Kaid a meaningful look. The old man wouldn’t want to confess ancient evils in front of a crowd. “A demonologist. An exorcist. Possibly a medium or necromancer to communicate with the spirit.” Kaid was as thick as a brick. He didn’t move.
The General said nothing till he was sure he’d say only what he wanted to be heard. And that was, “Get out, Garrett.”
“When you’re ready to talk, then.”
“Get out. Leave me alone. Hell, get out of my house. Get out of my life . . . ”
He had another fit. This was a big one. Kaid yelled, “Get that doctor up here!” His expression lacked any forgiveness for having gotten the old man so excited.
Strange people, every one.
32
I joined Cook in the kitchen. We were alone. “Can you use a hand?”
“Come to try sweet-talking me out of something, eh? I see right through you, boy. You ought to know by now I don’t run my mouth. I don’t tell nobody nothing that ain’t none of their business.”
“Of course.” I rolled up my sleeves, eyed the heap of dirty stuff distastefully. Not much I hate more than washing dishes. But I stole a pot of hot water off the stove, prepared a sink, put more water on to heat, dug in. Ten minutes of silence passed. I waited till I felt her curiosity becoming palpable.
“You were up there when they looked at the General. What did you think?”
“I think that croaker is as crooked as the General says.” She didn’t sound convinced. She sounded worried.
“Know what he thinks is wrong?”
“I know what he said. He’s crazy if he believes it. Ain’t no haunts around here.”
“Three draugs.”
She grunted. There lay the core of her doubt. If those draugs hadn’t come, she wouldn’t have given the doctor’s idea a glance.
“People keep telling me, the General doesn’t have enemies of the killing kind. And there’s no incentive here for anyone to hurry him along, despite the size of the estate.”
“What’ll be left after he lets it wither. I swear, his damnfool sickness has infected the whole place.” Her voice was weak. She wasn’t the woman she’d been.
Things were going on inside her head. She had no attention to spare.
“If nobody from today wants to kill him, to torment him with slow death and the hell between when he passes, who in his past might? My gut feeling is, it goes back to before his move to the Cantard.”
She grunted and threw utensils around and didn’t say anything.
“What happened? The only trauma I know of is his wife’s death. Could that have something to do with it? Her parents . . . Jennifer says she thinks they were a firelord and stormwarden but she doesn’t know who. Is this a legacy from them? A delayed curse?”
She still didn’t have squat to say.
“Were they involved in the Blue cabal that went after Kenrick III?”
“You put a lot together out of nothing, boy.”
“That’s what I do. I get paid for it. I think the grandparents were involved. I think Jennifer’s mother came here partly to hide from reprisals if the plot failed. Lucky her. It did. And Kenrick devoured everyone remotely related to it. I wonder if the doctor who administered an incorrect drug was on the royal payroll. Maybe Jennifer survived only because he couldn’t murder a newborn.”
“You do put it together.”
I kept quiet, hoping she’d fill the vacuum.
I washed, set stuff out to dry. There was enough work for me to make me a new career when I got tired of the old one. I was tempted.
“The missus’s mother called herself Charon Light. Her daddy was Nightmare Blue.”
“One fun-loving guy.” Nightmare Blue had put the Blue plot together. He’d been as mean-spirited and vicious as they came. The story was that
only the threatened defection of key conspirators forced him to confine his scheme to the King. He’d wanted to scrub Kenrick’s whole house. The bad blood between the men stemmed from a mysterious childhood incident.
Charon Light, supposedly, was as innocent as a wife could be. She’d apparently been ignorant of the plot till the last hours. There was reason to suspect she’d been responsible for its failure, in the penultimate moment warning the King.
We’ll never know—unless someone raises the dead to ask. None of those people survived. I doubt anybody would try. Raising a sorcerer is a fool’s game—unless you’re a more powerful sorcerer.
“Eleanor’s mother brought her here to hide her?”
Cook grunted, having second thoughts about talking. She kept her peace for a few minutes. I got more hot water.
“Her mother brought her. In the middle of the night, it was. A devil’s own night, thunder and lightning and the wind howling like all the lost souls. She was some distant relative of the Stantnors’ was Charon Light. Don’t recall her born name. Something Fen. She brought the child in so frightened, she wet herself. As bad as Jennifer, she was, never been out of her own house before. Such a pretty young thing, too.”
“Like Jennifer.”
“She was more retiring than Jenny. Jenny can work herself up. She’s an actress, our Jenny. She puts on a role like a dress, that child. Not young mistress Eleanor. Scared of her own shadow, that one.”
I grunted this time.
“The old General and Charon Light, they worked it out right here in this kitchen. I was here, serving tea. They’d marry the child to young Will, in name only, so she’d be safe. This was only a couple days before the storm broke. Kenrick couldn’t do nothing to upset the old General. He was the only rock between Karenta and defeat in the Cantard in those days.”
The war hadn’t meant much to me back then. My father had been dead for years, killed down there, and I wasn’t old enough to worry about going. But I did recall that, at about that time, Karenta’s fortunes had been at low ebb and there’d been talk about the elder Stantnor being the only man who could handle the Venageti of the day.
“You want the benefit of my suspicion, I think Charon Light was going to deal. Going to sell the plot for immunity. I don’t know if that’s how she went. She didn’t survive.”
I told her, “I’m starting to get confused. I thought Jennifer was born about then. And she had an older brother.”
“Half brother. His mother was the General’s first wife. Have-to wedding when he was sixteen. Daughter of a serving woman. But you don’t need to know that.”
“I need to know everything if I’m going to make sense of what’s happening. Hidden things kill. What happened to the first wife?”
“They stayed married till the boy was old enough for tutors and nannies. Then he put her aside. The old General sent the family away.”
“Hard feelings involved?”
“Plenty. But the old General bought them off. He reminded young Will every day. Especially if he spent a night out wenching. A terror, he was, when he was a lad. Obsessed, you might say.” She didn’t sound like she’d thought him an amusing rake. He didn’t sound like somebody I’d have liked.
For fifteen minutes I tried to get her to tell me more. I got only enough to guess the young Stantnor was a crude ass, a driven philanderer whose life had gained direction and meaning only after his permanent move to the Cantard.
“So he wasn’t a nice guy. Who from those days hated him enough to—”
“No.” There was no equivocation there. “That’s life, Garrett. The hurt don’t hang on. Everybody does stupid things when they’re young.”
Some don’t ever stop.
“Everybody grows out of them. You don’t laugh at them when you look back, but you don’t take a killing grudge to your grave, neither.”
I don’t know. The Stantnors seemed pretty skewed. If that extended to their circle, someone in contact might hold a grudge over something normal people would call bad luck.
“Then you tell me. Who’s haunting him?”
She stopped working, looked at me. She’d remembered something she hadn’t thought about in years. For a moment she teetered on the brink of telling me. Then she shook her head. Her face closed down. “No. It wasn’t that way.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Nothing. Some cruel gossip. Nothing to do with us today.”
“You’d better tell me. It might have some bearing.”
“I don’t repeat no lies about no one. Wouldn’t have nothing to do with this, nohow.”
I got my third pot of hot water. I was tearing them up. I bet she hadn’t seen so many clean dishes in years. I’m good for something. Can’t keep people from killing each other, but I’m a wiz at washing dishes. Might be time to consider a career change.
After a while, she said, “What goes around comes around. He sure fell for Missus Eleanor. She was his goddess.”
We all want what we’re not supposed to have. I tried an encouraging grunt. When that didn’t get any response I tried a direct question. She said, “I think I done talked too much already. I think I done said things I shouldn’t have said to no outsider.”
I doubted that. I thought she’d weighed every word and had told me exactly what she wanted me to know. She’d give me another ration when she thought I was ready.
“I hope you know what you’re doing. I’d bet there’re things in your head that could save lives.”
Maybe I pressed a touch too hard there. She didn’t have to be told what she already knew. She resented it. She gave me a dirty look and clammed up till dinnertime. Then she only growled and gave orders.
33
After supper, having finally gotten the doctor and Saucerhead off, Morley and I headed for my suite. As we climbed the stairs, I said, “I guess old Dellwood got tired of waiting.” He’d abandoned the coach hours earlier, according to the coachman, who wasn’t pleased with his own lot. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to ask him in out of the cold.
Morley belched. “That woman tried to poison me. That mess wasn’t fit to feed a hog.”
I chuckled. He’d made only one oblique negative comment and had gotten invited to cook his own meals.
His presence didn’t thrill the natives. His charm, stoked to a white heat, had been wasted on Jennifer. His feelings were hurt. He wasn’t used to being looked at like something from the underside of a rock.
They didn’t know who and what he was, only that he was somebody who had invaded their weird little world. Me, I’m not such a sensitive guy.
“A lovely bunch, Garrett. Truly lovely. The girl should work at an icehouse. Where do you find these people?”
“They find me. People who aren’t troubled don’t need me.”
He grunted. There was a lot of that going around. “I understand that.”
I suspect his clients are weirder than mine. But he doesn’t have to deal with them on an extended basis.
I checked the telltales at the door. There’d been no sloppy visitors. We stepped inside. I said, “I’m going to take a nap. I had a hard night last night. Don’t turn into a spook again.”
He gave me a sour grin. “Not this time.” He started unwinding a piece of cord he’d scrounged up while I was helping Cook clear supper dishes.
“What’s that for?”
“To measure with. You say somebody’s getting in and out without using the door, there’s got to be a way.” He measured off a foot of cord, tied a knot, folded the cord, tied another knot. Not a perfect ruler but it would do.
“I was going to do that myself. When I got time.”
“You never get time for detail work, Garrett. You’re too busy bulling around, trying to make things happen. What do you expect tonight?”
I’d hinted that we could expect some excitement. “I figure that one draug will come back. What else, who knows? Getting so I think anything can happen here. While you’re fiddling around, think of a way to get Chai
n to give himself away.”
“The fat guy with the garbage mouth?”
“That’s him.”
“He the baddie?”
“He’s the only one I can line up who had opportunity with Hawkes and Bradon and the attempts on me.”
“Turn you into bait. Catch him in the act.”
“Thanks a bunch. He’s screwed it up three times already. Maybe four. How many shots should I give him?”
“Take your nap. You’re safe. Morley’s here.”
“That’s not the comfort you think it should be.” I went into the bedroom, shucked my clothes and slithered in between the sheets. There was something sinful about being naked in such comfort.
For about thirty seconds I listened to Morley putter, measuring and talking to himself while rain tippy-tapped on the windows. Then the lights went out.
The lights never came on. Not quite.
But there were fires to light the night. Well, there was the threat of fire, anyway.
I woke up no longer alone. My blonde friend was back. Checking my head, touching my face, all that.
This time she didn’t move fast enough. But she was leaning way over, off balance, and I didn’t think before I grabbed. I got her wrist and gave her a come-hither tug. She fell on top of me.
It was dark. She’d have been invisible if she’d been a brunette wearing dark clothing. Still, from four inches her face was visible. She wore a sort of smile, like she wanted to look kittenish and playful. The rest of her couldn’t fake it. She shook like she was terrified.
“Talk to me,” I whispered. “Tell me who you are.” I put an arm around her, caressed the back of her neck. Her hair felt fine as spider silk, light as down. I did it to keep her from getting away, but it took only about four seconds for me to start having trouble keeping my mind on business.
She kissed me instead of answering me.
Man, oh, man. It had the kick of straight grain alcohol. It got me repeating mantras just to remember who I was.
Shaking like she was running naked through a hailstorm, she turned up the heat. She worked her way under the covers. This was what the old man needed to keep him warm. Boy, could he save on firewood.